History of Randolph County, Indiana with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers : to which are appended maps of its several townships, Part 27

Author: Tucker, Ebenezer
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago : A.L. Klingman
Number of Pages: 664

USA > Indiana > Randolph County > History of Randolph County, Indiana with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers : to which are appended maps of its several townships > Part 27

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

NOTE .- The writer of these sketches then lived at the Union Literary Institute, near Spartansburg, and some eight miles from Lynn ; and it was stated at the time that six lay dead before the one that died first had been buried. And also that two half- grown lads had to bury their father alone. It was said also that at Beston, six miles south of Richmond, Ind., the first person was taken sick at sunrise, and that before sundown six persons lay dead in that village. Whether these statements were true is not now known, but it is certain that they were made at the time as being matters of current news, and that they were supposed to be correct. The writer well recollects what fear pervaded the school at the institute lest the dread scourge should break out amongst them in its terrible power as at Lynn and elsewhere. The boarding house of the institution was filled with students, and the cholera among them would have been an awful visitation, but by God's mercy the fearful plague came no nearer, and they were spared. [See also statements of Silas Johnson and William Pickett, and of Elder W. D. Stone.]

JERE SMITH, 1817-READ AT OLD SETTLERS' MEETING, JUNE 11, 1864.

The subjoined sketch is so apposite and so well drawn that I cannot forbear to transfer it, in substance, to my pages :

" I came to Indiana, in 1817, with my father, William Smith, being twelve years old. He stopped that spring near Garrett's mill, on Green's Fork, two miles above Williamsburg, Ind. The settlers there were mostly from the same neighborhood in South Carolina with my father. David Young had come out in the fall of 1816, rented some ground for father, and a little cabin in a new town called Salem, in Wayne County, extinct long ago. Father put in a crop on that land, and stayed there till August, and then went up into Randolph County. The country all seemed low and like a river bottom in the jungles. The uncleared land was full of ramps, a rank, ill-smelling weed, eagerly eaten by the cows, and utterly ruining their milk. They grew early, how- ever, and were soon gone. Buckeyes, nettles, gnats and mosqui- toes were very plenty. In May, I saw the first Indians. An Indian family camped on the bank of the branch near Salem. I

HISTORY OF RANDOLPHI COUNTY.

was terribly afraid, for all I had ever read or heard of cruel, bloody savages came thronging up to my mind. However, I ventured up after awhile, and got over my scare. After that, an old Indian, called Johnny Green, from whom Green's Fork was named, used to come and talk with us. He would get half drunk, and then the way he would talk was a wonder. He would tell of Wayne's fight with the Indians on the Maumee. He said, acting it out as he talked, ' Injun hide in timber, heap Injun. White man come, heap white man. Injun shoot, heap shoot. White man get in a row. Injun heap shoot, heap shoot. Bimeby old Anthony get mad, heap mad ! Gallop horse along row, heap halloo, hoo-ee, hoo-ee, hoo-ee.'

"White man come, heap come, keep come, Antony heap holloo, hoo-ee, hoo-ee, hoo-ee, Injun shoot, heap shoot, white man keep come, then Injun run, run, run, heap run. Me run, run, heap run. Bimeby me come to a swamp, me jump in-yoo ook, sink down, hide, night come, me slip away.' It excited me greatly to hear the old Indian savage act out this scene, and tell the tale of this battle, and the picture remains in my mind vivid to this day. In July, 1817, father entered fractional Sections 5 and 6, Town 18, Range 13 east, near the head of West Fork of White Water, now in Randolph, but then in Wayne, just east of the new boundary, and two or three miles farther up than any other settler, like the Nolan's Fork settlers three years before, on the ntmost verge of civilization. We laid our corn by, helped Unele George Smith through harvest and haying, and then Aug- ust 18, 1817, father took his team and wagon, my two older broth - ers, David and Carey, and myself, and went out to his land, sev- eral miles through the woods, to build a cabin. We stayed all night at old William Blount's (the Zimmerman Farm), and the next morning went on, cutting a road as we went. A little after noon we got to the spot, the top of the hill where my father built, and where he spent the rest of his days. We cleared the bushes away, turned the horses to the feed trough on the tongue, and . went to work. In a week we had a cabin up and covered, and had made a fire-place and chimney up to the funnel with dirt back and jambs. but the house had no floor. Father and one brother went back to bring the family and things, but my other brother and myself stayed there and cleared a patch for turnips. The next week the family came, and we sowed our turnips. We had a few small late ones that fall. We hewed logs and built a house in October, and had it floored and ready in December. In the winter we cleared two acres in the creek bottom, smooth for meadow, and sowed it in timothy ; also six acres, ‘ eighteen inch- es and under, ' for corn, and built a smith shop for father to work at his trade in. He was a blacksmith.

" William Blount lived highest up the creek, but one of his sons-in-law built a cabin about one-fourth mile above him, and another son-in-law lived on the same section.

"Jolin Proctor lived just below on Section 17. Evan Shoc- maker had the north end, and Griffin Davis the south end of Fractional Section 18.

" John Jordan (and his son, William) lived on Section 19, in Wayne County. Thomas Brower and John Gwynn lived below on the same section. James Malcom was on the northeast quarter of Section 17, and IIenry Shoemaker lived with him. Samuel Sales, Arny Hall, and David Jones, lived on the southeast quar- ter of Section 17. Isaac Barnes and John C. Hodge (brothers- in-law), from Beaver County, Penn., had entered land and built cabins. They went back for their families, and returned in the spring of 1818, by boat, down the Ohio to Cincinnati, and thence by land. Mr. Barnes' cabin stood on Section 7, across the creek from where Blount lived, and where Barrett Barnett lived a few years ago. Mr. Hodge's dwelling stood on Section 8, near and south of where my father built, and where Emerson Street lived ten years ago. So Mr. Hodge was our nearest neighbor.

" The country was thickly covered with a tall, heavy forest, having a dense undergrowth of shrubs, wild grass and weeds. I will name the trees most abundant : first, beech, sugar tree, ash,

three varieties, gray, blue and swamp; oak, five varieties, white, red, burr, pin and river ; poplar ; walnut-white and black ; elm-red or slippery, and white or hickory; hickory-white or shell-bark, and black or pignut ; buckeye, linn, wild-maple, hack- berry, coffee-nut, honey-locust, cottonwood. The undergrowth was spicc-bush, iron-wood, water-beech, horn-beam, prickly ash, dog-wood, kunnekanie (Indian name -- tree now extinct), red-bud, papaw, wild-plum. red and black haw, sassafras. In swamps there were black-alder, willow, thorn, crab-apple, young cotton- wood. Weeds and. grasses were nettles, pea-vines, may-apple, ginseng, ferns, black snake-root, seneca-root, silk-weed, ramps (soon extinct), bear-grass, file-grass, skunk's cabbage, pond lily, cats-tail.

"In clearings, there were butter weeds, thistles, mullen, dog fennel ; in tilled lands, Spanish needles and touch-me-nots.

" The game were deer, squirrels-gray, red and black ; tur- keys, pheasants and bears. Other wild animals-wolves, raccoons, ground hogs, opossums, porcupines, wild cats, foxes, panthers. mink, otters and polecats. Wild bees were abundant.

" People helped each other roll logs, raise buildings and husk corn, often going several miles for that purpose. For milling, peo- ple had to go to Milton, or even to Connersville. My father got a pair of hand mill-stones, and we ground meal upon them, rather than go so far to mill. We also beat hominy in a mortar, and used that and potatoes and squashes and pumpkins instead of bread. My father finally had his mill-stones geared, and much of the corn of the neighborhood was ground upon them. Two turning would grind pretty well, but four would rattle it out finely.

CLOTHING.

" Our clothing was made of flax, wool and deer-skin, all home made. There was no money to buy ." store clothes," and very few to be bought. Trade was mostly by barter. Peltry, honey, beeswax (for there were bees, both wild and tame), etc., were trad- ed for salt, iron (which always had to be bought), and some- times for leather, though many tanned their own leather, and many wore only moccasins. Hides were tanned in great troughs made from trunks of large trees chopped out hollow.

" Winter clothing was coon-skin caps, dressed deer-skin hunt- ing shirts, pants and moccasins. Summer wear was linen, straw hats, bare-feet or moccasins. We often got moccasins from the Indians for corn, butter, hominy, salt, etc. The people, though now they would be called rough and uncouth, were yet neighbor- ly, kind, sociable and affectionate, and intelligent and moral withal.

" The wild range was good for many years, and we soon had plenty of cattle, which furnished abundance of milk, butter and meat, with hides and tallow to buy salt, iron and leather. From 1821 to 1828, a common way to trade was, so many young cat- tle for a thing, for (say) a horse, yoke of oxen, piece of land, etc., and anything from six months to three years old was "counted in." If the parties could not agree, the price was settled by referees. Sometimes so many bushels of wheat or corn would be the price. In 1826-27, money began to appear somewhat, and barter became less frequent. However, in the spring of 1838, I traded a large, rather ugly four-year-old horse, and a half-worn dragon-bitted bridle, for a forty-acre lot a mile west of Winches- ter, no price being named in the trade.

CLEARING LAND.

" Clearing land was done thus : " One foot and under," or " eighteen inches and under," ¿. e., all below twelve or eighteen inches, were cut, and they and the " grubs " and old logs were all burned up. The rest were deadened by " girdling " ( i. e., cut- ting through the bark, or the sap), or by burning brush heaps around the trees. If girdled to the "red," the tree would die immediately ; if only through the bark, it would take two or three or four years, soonest if deadened in August. The dead- ened trees would fall more or less, and the land would have

HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

to be recleared each season for several years. Many, about the fourth year, would cut down everything standing, and clear the land fully. The trees would be made into proper lengths for rolling by " niggering," i. e., burning the trunks into pieces by piling large limbs and chunks across, and keeping fires across the tree-trunks. Attending to these fires was called " watching the niggers." I have done it many a time, attending sometimes a hundred fires in one job. Sometimes, at first, land was cleared in the green, but as soon as they could, it would be done by dead- ening, and mostly in August, by cutting the undergrowth, with stubs a foot or so long ; nearly all would rot or die out the third year. The whole might be cleared by cutting and cross-piling and firing, with but little labor.

BIRDS AND " VARMINTS."

" When the land was cleared " in the green," the birds, eto., for three or four years would nearly take the crop. The trees left standing would afford them ample refuge, and they would . take heavy tell. In 1821 or 1822, a general inroad of turkeys, birds, squirrels, raccoons, and even bears, passed the West River settlement toward the South. Much of the crops were destroyed. The creatures crossed over the Ohio into Kentucky ; vast num- bers were slaughtered as they passed ; I once killed three turkeys from one flock, and my father and brothers, five more, making eight in all. The little boys used to -be kept going round the fields, " hallooing " and screaming, to keep the birds away ; sometimes yelling themselves hoarse.

" PIGEON ROOST."

" In the fall and winter of 1821-22, a pigeon roost was made between father's ard Huntsville, on the southwest quarter of Sec- tion 33, Township 18, Range 13, and northwest quarter of Sec- tion 4, Township 18, Range 13. They began in October or November, and stayed to lay and hatch the next spring. They would begin to come about sun-down, and keep coming till 8 or 9 o'clock at night ; some flocks would be more than a mile long. There must have been millions of the birds ; on still nights, we could hear their noise to our house, a mile and a half. People would go there by night and kill them by hundreds, coming from Martindale Creek, and even from Green's Fork. The birds would lay their eggs in March, two in a nest, hatch and fly away, such as were left. I have seen but few for many years.

' FALLEN TIMBER.'

" In 1824, a terrible hurricane passed over my father's house. It was the second Sunday in July-the regular monthly meeting of the Baptist Church at Salem, of which my father and mother were members. My brother - David and myself had been there and were going home ; hence it took place July 11, 1824, at 5 P. M. As we were going along the Jacksonburg road, near the county line, we saw a black cloud rising in the west and we stopped in an empty cabin, hitching our colts near by. The cloud roared terribly, and the sky became suddenly dark; in five minutes it grew as dark as a starlight night ; no sound was heard for twenty or thirty minutes but a deep, dead, tremendous roar ; I heard no rain, no thunder, no trees falling, nothing but that awful roar, deep, dead and loud ; it stopped quite suddenly, and the sky grew bright again ; on going out, we saw there had been a heavy rain, and many trees, both dead and green, had been blown down around us. We started again for home, two miles north ; some trees had fallen across the road, but we got to old John Zimmer- man's (Blount's) place, with little trouble. He and his boys were out fixing the fence to save the crops ; forty or fifty rods of fence were flat, and many trees also. John Zimmerman said (he was Dutch), " You can't kit home, te trees is all'blown town acrost te rote." We said, "We will try." David said, "Our colts can go through the brush where a wild cat can't." The farther we went the worse it got. The thick timber began one quarter of

a mile above, and for a half mile to the creek crossing there had been no clearing, but it had been dense, unbroken forest. As we entered the mass of crushed and fallen timber, we tried to follow the track till we got to where Elijah Arnold built, and his widow Rhods still lives (1864). We could get no farther; it was nearly dark, and stripping the bridles and old riding quilts from the heads and backs of the colts, we shouldered the things and put for home. The poor fillies neighed most pitifally as we left them; we got home before long, they came three days afterward. They never told us how they got through, neither can I imagine, but they made it somehow ; we found the family unhurt, frightened at the terrible storm, but thankful for safety. Most of the roof was blown off, weight poles and all; some of the clap-boards were carried 200 yards or more ; the body of the house was hewed logs, and they stood firm. Early the next morning, the whole neighborhood set to work, righting up houses, buildings, fences, etc., and on Thursday, we got the road opened again. Half a mile south of father's, a sound, thrifty-growing beech tree was twisted like a hickory withe, from two to eight feet above the ground, and was lying down all whole except that twist. It would seem that the tree had been bent over, and that while falling, it had been 'whirled ' by the tornado, and the tree was so tough and green that it would not break, but just twisted like a withe. I helped cut the tree out of the road ; it had stood west of the track and lay a little north of east. Another fact, at John E. Hodge's house, 300 yards south of father's, a twelve or fifteen gallon iron sugar kettle had been leaning against the southeast corner of the cabin, a low, one-story building. The wind moved the kettle three or four feet, and turned it bottom- upward. Mr. Hodge's cabin was wholly unroofed, and some of the ribs and logs were thrown out of place ; the wind was stronger there than at father's, being 300 yards nearer the center of the storm. How far west or how high up in the air the storm was formed I never knew; it seems to have struck the timber at the Randolph and Henry line ; its course was about due east, and nearly in a straight line, verging slightly south. The extent of the storm was about six miles from west to cast ; it seems to have come down to the timber about the county line, and to have come nearer and widened for two and a half miles, then to have ground and crushed everything in its reach, for about one and a half miles in length. and a mile in width ; then it seemed to rise or grow weaker, till at length it appeared to pass entirely above the timber. My father's house and the road we traveled were nearly a mile west of where its effect ceased, and its crashing track was about half a mile wide there, its whole track being at that point about three miles from north to south ; not quite a mile west, the crashing power was a mile wide, and for two miles farther west, the crashing force was a mile from one to one and a quarter miles. That whole region was a dense virgin forest, and the storm threw down all the timber in one immense mass. Some four miles west, a road had been opened north and south ; that road was utterly blocked, and for years was wholly impassable for man or beast. This space, four miles east and west, and a mile or so north and south, was called the " fallen timber." Some ten years later the settlers began to enter and clear the lands and the tract is now occupied by fine farms."

So far as known, no person and no animal was killed or in- jured, which is, indeed, a wonderful fact.

[NOTE .- It is stated elsewhere that a cow was killed belong- ing to Isaac Branson. See Reminiscences of Mrs. Anna Retz, above].

URIAH BALL (1817).

" When father first came west (1817), not being satisfied with Warren County, Ohio, he took a flat-boat and floated down the Ohio and the Mississippi, stopping first in Tennessee, near Chick- asaw Bluffs ; he bought out an improvement there and located, but sickness soon drove us away from that region, and he went across the river to Little Prairie, Mo. Before long he turned his face northward again, coming back through Kentucky to

HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

Warren County, Ohio. The first Indian I ever saw was near Chickasaw Bluffs, Tenn. I was afraid of him, and tried to hide behind father ; but the Indian (all painted and feathered) would ' peek ' around father at me, to scare me, I suppese.

"The great earthquake had occurred a few years before (1811- 12), and at Little Prairie we would often come to great "cracks" in the ground several feet wide. Sometimes trees would be stand- ing split partly open, and " astraddle " of the crack. Two miles from Little Prairie, there had been before the earthquake a lake of considerable size. The earthquake so raised the land as to " spill all the water out," and the bottom was at that time two feet higher than the surrounding land. Outside the lake were trees and cancbrakes, but in the lake ground were only great weeds like sun-flower weeds, called by the French "wample-pins."

" The earth had not done shaking yet, fer as I lay on the cabin floor sick with the ague, the house and the doors, and the dishes would rattle with the shaking of the earth ; and as we were en the Mississippi, the water would " ripple " as theugh there were a heavy shower, while yet the sky was clear and the air still.

"In New Madrid the houses had been cracked and twisted by the earthquake, and stood so yet when we were there (although some years after the earthquake had occurred).

"I sat on the west bank of the Mississippi and looked across the river with a spy-glass at the deer and the bears as they would come down to the river to drink, standing upon the eastern shore.

[Mr. Ball now resides at Union City, aged and feeble.]

JUDITH (WILSON) WAY (1817).

" I was bern in Carolina in 1807, and was in my tenth year when father emigrated to Indiana in 1816-17.

" On the first day of December, 1816, a large company of emigrants set out from South Carolina, bound for Randolph Co., Ind., as follows :

Paul W. Way and family, five in number.

John Way and family, six in number.

John Moorman and family, six in number.

Benjamin Beverly and family, six in number.

George T. Wilson and family, five in number. Armsbee Diggs and family, two in number.

They were relatives by blood, or marriage, or both.

Paul W. and John Way were brothers. George T. Wilson had married John Moorman's daughter.

" Benjamin Beverly's wife was Paul Way's sister, as also was Armsbee Diggs' wife. Thus there were six men with their wive - and eighteen children, making thirty in all. We had four wagons, to wit: One two-horse wagon, two five-horse wagons, one four-horse wagon. John Moorman (with his son-in-law, George Wilson), had a two-horse wagon and a five horse wagon ; Paul W. Way (with Benjamin Beverly, his brother-in-law), had one five-horse wagon ; John Way (with Armsbee Diggs, his son- in-law), had one four-horse wagon, making sixteen horses in all.

" We overtook families of emigrants in every variety of loce- motion ; some had only pack horses, and sometimes there would be a whole family with a single horse. I remember one such in particular. They had a little knot of a horse piled up with goods, with two or three children on top and the woman and baby besides. The whole cry was " to get to Indiana," no mat- ter how, so as only to reach that paradise beyond the Ohio.

" As I said, we started from Carolina December 1, 1816, and we reached Williamsburg, Wayne County, Ind , February 27, 1817.

"Our route lay across Blue Ridge, over the Holston, along French Broad and Crooked Rivers, through Sawanna gap, over Cumberland Mountains, and so through Tennessee and Kentucky to the Ohio River at Cincinnati. We camped on New Year's night on a very high bluff on French Broad, with steps cut down to the river. We saw a live alligator, which to us children was an unusual sight. There was a severe snow-storm as we were on

top of the Cumberland Mountains, and we had snow and cold weather from there all the way through. The Ohio River was frozen over, and we crossed on the ice ; boys were skating, and ladies and gentlemen were riding in sleighs on the river. Our folks were afraid to cross with their heavy wagons and big teams ; and the men went over to Cincinnati and got men to come with leng ropes and haul the wagons across the ice in that way. The hind wheels of Paul Way's wagon (which was the last one to cross), broke through the ice, and it was hard work to get the wagon out and across, but they succeeded. George Wilson (my father), was likely to have been drowned. He fell into an air hole up to his neck, and came near being sucked under the ice : but he held to the ice and the men pulled him out.

" We met a tribe of Indians (I think somewhere in Kentucky), going home with their ponies and their squaws. They had been to make peace, and to get their pay and their presents. There were 500 or more ef them, men and women on ponies with the chief. Our company were greatly alarmed, but the Indians did us no harm. They asked for tobacco and bread, and they got what they asked fer, so far as our folks had them. We were very glad to get along with them so easily as that. They went on their way, and our people passed on toward the Ohio, thank- ful to escape so cheaply.

"That winter journey was a severe one, and to look back it is not easy to see how we were able to get safely through. But by God's mercy we were spared to come safe to our looked-for haven, and to reach the friends who had already made the trip, and to meet them in joy and thankfulness of heart."

This is understood to have been the first company of emi- grants to White River in Randolph County.

Paul W. Way, Henry H. Way, William Way, Robert Way and William Diggs had gone up White River from its mouth through the woods te Randolph County. Paul Way had gone back to Carolina to pilot the company through, and the others had stayed in Indiana. Henry Way and William Diggs went down to Wayne County during the fall and winter, and were married, and William Diggs and his wife are understood to have been the first family who settled on White River in Randolph County. Fannie Ilill, of Jericho, oldest daughter of William Diggs, says her mother lived there for six weeks without seeing a white face (except probably her husband).

Such moving and such settlement as this would not very well suit modern notions of pride and comfort. But such was the way of the pioneers, and thus this goodly heritage gained its brave and hardy settlers.

The Ways, the Wrights, the Moormans, the Diggses, the Pucketts, the Hills, and many others were numerous and noted in early times among the primitive settlers, and many of their descendants still remain.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Randolph County, Indiana with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers : to which are appended maps of its several townships, Part 27

Author: Tucker, Ebenezer Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Chicago : A.L. Klingman Number of Pages: 664

Author: Tucker, Ebenezer
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago : A.L. Klingman
Number of Pages: 664